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Drastic price cutting has hit the online storage space, or so you may read. But, unfortunately, most of the price cutting is for big time corporate users not us little guys. Well, that’s not completely true. There have been some serious price cuts on online storage for us ordinary users since I last wrote about this back in May.

That was when Google switched from super cheap prices to only sort of cheap prices — and you had to sign up to pay monthly instead of paying once a year. Big drag. Google’s prices remain unchanged, starting at $1.20 per GB per year (excluding the free space you get).

But, the competition is heating up some. In July, Dropbox effectively halved its prices by giving you 100 GB, not just 50, for $99 a year. Excluding the 2 GB they give you free, that’s 99 cents per GB per year. And ahead of the updated Kindle Fire tablets, Amazon made a similar move, halving the price of its Cloud storage to around 56 cents per GB (excluding the 5 GB you get free).

Sugarsync has not reduced its prices since May and still sits at $2 per GB per year for starters, falling to $1.02 if you buy the maximum 250 GB plan $1.58 if you buy the maximum 100 GB plan. Apple, too, remains stuck at the high end, charging $2 per GB for additional space on iCloud (excluding the 5 GB free) — and up to a maximum of only 50 GB.

So, slight improvements — I’m not complaining — but not the all-out-war that’s taking place in the enterprise online storage market.

Finally, I’ll add that I have sampled services from Dropbox, Google Drive and Amazon Cloud on Mac and Windows computers as well as on iOS and Android devices. And I’ve used iCloud on Macs and iOS. I like Dropbox best because it just works so reliably and in the manner you expect. But there are benefits from the more integrated services. Dumping photos into my Amazon Cloud drive as a back up and seeing them sync automagically into my Kindle Fire’s photo gallery app is pretty cool. And you retain more control, or a finer level of control, over the process than with iCloud’s photostream and other Apple syncing practices.

UPDATE: Here’s a table comparing the major services

Service

Free (GB)

Added data (GB)

Prices per year

Price/Gb/year

Apple

5

10/20/50

20/40/100

$2/$2/$2

Amazon

5

15/45/95/195

10/25/50/100

$0.67/$0.56/$0.53/$0.51

Dropbox

2

98/198/498

99/199/499

$1/$1/$1

Google

5

20/95/195

30/60/120

$1.49/$0.63/$0.61

Microsoft

7

20/50/100

10/20/50

$0.50/$0.50/$0.50

SugarSync

5

25/55/95/245

50/100/150/250

$2/$1.82/$1.58/$1.02

Notes: “Added data” and “Price/GB/year” exclude free space. Prices have been rounded in some cases. Amazon and Google offer even higher data plans up into the terabytes.

The other day, I finally saw a unicorn crossing my lawn — no, not quite. Another almost as mythical a creature appeared on my computer, however: the Google Drive. It’s a long-rumored online storage space for any kind of digital files that lives on Google servers and syncs up with a designated folder on any computer of yours that you’d like. Like Dropbox. Or Sugarsync. Or Amazon Cloud drive. Or…many others. It is Google and that’s cool.

But one less than cool bit? Since Google started letting us upload almost any kind of file you wanted to an online storage bin associated with your Google Docs account, Google has had the most amazing prices on earth. With Google Drive, prices skyrocketed overnight. And even worse, there’s no longer an option to pay for a year at a time. Desperately in need of more customer credit card numbers to feed into its Android Play store and other new services, Google Drive’s extra space can only be paid for on a month-to-month basis. That may be a smart way for Google to catch up with Amazon and Apple in the paying customer accounts department, but for me it’s just blah.

I’m probably a little extra sad because at the instant the Google Drive was announced, I looked at the pricing for extra storage and it hadn’t been changed yet. When I returned a day later, however, I saw this:

Under the old system, 1 GB of extra space cost 25 cents per year no matter how much you bought. Simple and cheap. As you can see, for just $5 I had 20 GB of extra storage. But from now on, storage is about 10 cents per GB per month. For 25 GB of extra space, I’m looking at an annual cost of $29.88, or $1.20 per GB per year. For 100 GB of space under the new plan, you get a better rate — four times the space at double the cost. That’s $59.88 or about 60 cents a GB per year.

Still, it’s cheaper than what others offer and that may be why Google saw room to hike its prices. You start with 5 GB free at Google. Dropbox gives you only 2 GB free and, if you pay annually, another 48 GB for $99 a year, or $2.06 per GB. SugarSync has an annual option for 25 GB in addition to the 5 GB free that’s $49.99 a year, or $2 a GB a year for the extra storage. They go to $1.81 a GB if you buy 55 GB and $1.58 if you buy 95 GB. Amazon’s Cloud Drive gives you 5 GB free. Then it’s smoothly increasing at $1 per GB per year if you ignore that first 5 GB. If you want to be as annoying as I am and exclude that free bit, it’s equal to $1.33 per GB per year at 20 GB, $1.05 at 100 GB and $1.01 at 500 GB. Apple’s iCloud is at the high end, scaling up from 5 GB free at exactly $2 per GB per year but only up to 50 GB extra.

ON HIATUS

Thanks for stopping by GravitationalPull. Since mid-2013, I've taken a job as senior tech reporter for Yahoo Finance, so I won't be writing new posts here anymore. Check out my current stuff on my YF author page>.